From: Miss Islington (bot) <31488909+miss-islington@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 21:49:23 +0000 (-0800)
Subject: Document differences between random.choices() and random.choice(). (GH-11703) (GH... 
X-Git-Tag: v3.7.3rc1~112
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=e31f8604e692c46800abd70f88d9928fa1f17b7c;p=thirdparty%2FPython%2Fcpython.git

Document differences between random.choices() and random.choice(). (GH-11703) (GH-11706)
---

diff --git a/Doc/library/random.rst b/Doc/library/random.rst
index 4f251574a327..a543ff016a62 100644
--- a/Doc/library/random.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/random.rst
@@ -162,6 +162,13 @@ Functions for sequences
    with the :class:`float` values returned by :func:`random` (that includes
    integers, floats, and fractions but excludes decimals).
 
+   For a given seed, the :func:`choices` function with equal weighting
+   typically produces a different sequence than repeated calls to
+   :func:`choice`.  The algorithm used by :func:`choices` uses floating
+   point arithmetic for internal consistency and speed.  The algorithm used
+   by :func:`choice` defaults to integer arithmetic with repeated selections
+   to avoid small biases from round-off error.
+
    .. versionadded:: 3.6